Tajudeen Afolabi Adeola is a Nigerian entrepreneur and politician. He had a Diploma in Accounting from Yaba College of Technology and from where he was qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1980. Adeola has over the years received professional development training at foremost institutions like Harvard Business School, International Institute for Management Development in Switzerland, and INSEAD.
Afolabi co-established Guaranty Trust Bank in 1990 with Tayo Aderinokun, at where he managed as managing director/CEO from its inception in 1990 to July 2002. The bank has since expanded its tentacles of operation beyond Nigeria to other African countries; Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and The Gambia. The bank that has a commercial presence in United Kingdom got enlisted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange in 1996. His retirement from Guaranty Trust Bank delved him into becoming the chairman of credit and capital and oil and gas companies.
Afolabi has graced through the seat of public office as he has served as Chairman of the National Pension Commission, he was also a member of the National Honours and Awards Committee, and was appointed a member of the Governing Council of Lagos State University in 2004.
In the political scene, Afolabi was the Vice-Presidential candidate of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) serving as running mate to former Economic and Financial Crimes Commission chairman (EFCC) Nuhu Ribadu in the 2011 presidential election.
In 2000, Afolabi founded the FATE Foundation. FATE is a non-governmental organization that aims at encouraging entrepreneurship, employing the scopes of training, mentoring, loan support, and consulting to support young Nigerians. Today, the foundation has served over 30,000 young Nigerian entrepreneurs.
Afolabi has once served as a member of the Global Advisory Committee on Philanthropy of the World Economic Forum for four years, he was appointed Commissioner on the Commission for Africa in 2004 by the then British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The business executive is a recipient of the national honor of the Order of the Federal Republic (OFR), amongst other awards he received for his remarkable contributions to the business world.
